Doughnuts

My original plan was to make apple cider doughnuts with apple butter I preserved last fall. However, as is usually the case when I cook, I got so excited about the concept of doughnuts from a sourdough barm that I forgot to add the apple butter.

This is my first attempt and while I was generally pleased with the results, a few tweaks can surely be made to the recipe.

9 ounces sourdough starter
3.5 ounces dried milk powder
3.5 ounces sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
1/4 ounce salt
1/4 ounce yeast (I am increasing this to 1/2 ounce next time around)
5 ounces eggs (3 large eggs)
2 ounces water (I actually used almond milk, but I doubt with that small of an amount there is any difference)
3 tablespoons of butter at room temp
12.5 ounces of flour
a scant pinch of nutmeg and cardamom

I kneaded for about 3 minutes, rested for a half an hour and then kneaded for another 5. The dough was very tacky, borderline sticky. The dough rose for about 3 hours, then was shaped and slept overnight in the fridge. It was removed about 2 hours before and let to come to room temperature, and then fried.



In an attempt at comparing the two methods, I baked half and fried the other half. The baked half was not very good - they stayed very bread-like and dried out too quickly. However, the half that was fried achieved a nice sweetness (I did not put much sugar in them because I prefer a more European style doughnut) and were a beautiful, golden brown color.



However, next time I am increasing the yeast from 1/4 to 1/2 of an ounce. This batch was far too dense and I don't think Captain Renault was as full of life as I had hoped. He stayed in the fridge about an extra day too long before being converted into these doughnuts. Ideally, I would like to fill some (or at the very least top) with some blueberry jam, but that will have to wait until next batch!